#asl langblr

[justeunmetamorphe]

Hello! ¡Hola! привет! 안녕하세요!

I go by Static or Métamorphe (they/them), I’m 22 years old, and this is the little langblr I started as an aspiring polyglot.

For right now this is just a WIP introduction post, but I am studying more right now so I found it fitting to make one that goes over the languages I’m learning!

My native language is English and I’ve been learning Canadian French as a second language casually for about 10 years (and yet I’m still at about A2!!) - it's become the hardest language for me because my education was so bad, so I've decided to pick up some others instead.

My target languages (including, but not limited to):

American Sign Language (ASL)

Mexican Spanish

Russian

Korean

I want to get more familiar with ASL specifically. Hopefully someday son I can say that I’m above A2/Level 1 in some of these languages!!

Some other languages I’m not currently focused on, but am extremely interested in learning are:

Arabic

Hindi or Punjabi

Mandarin Chinese

Irish (Gaielge)

Welsh (Cymraeg)

My big interests right now include languages (especially conlangs and slang/cants like Polari and Toki Pona!!), science (especially life sciences!), philosophy, and video games.

I think that’s all for now… stick around for more I guess!

(btw this is a side blog so I will be following from a different account)

[linguist-breakaribecca]

Today, in “I’ll take any good news I can find”:

A production of Romeo and Juliet with Deaf actors signing their lines has been referred to as bilingual! Not just “accessible” or “diverse” but also BILINGUAL!

This makes me happy because the general idea of ASL (and other signed languages) is that they’re just a manual version of the spoken language. By that logic, Norwegian is just a higher-latitude version of German. Signed languages are languages of their own! With unique vocabulary, grammar, and dialects!

[cup-noodle]

the cruelest thing about the world is that there's so many languages and a girl can't learn all of them

[salvadorbonaparte]

The last time I looked into finger spelling I still went by a different name so I was like oh shit I gotta memorise a completely different order of letters now

[like-this-post-if-you]

Like this post if you speak a Sign Language

[unclepolyglot]

Originally posted here on reddit.

"Hello everyone, I am a PhD student at the University of Georgia studying sign second language acquisition. I am looking for hearing ASL learners to take part in an exploratory study. If you have the time to help out a poor grad student I would greatly appreciate it!"

I'm not the OP but she gave me permission to signal boost this here. Please participate if you can!

[the-ambitious-academic]

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a list of online resources for learning ASL. It seems like it was put together by their ASL and Deaf Culture Club, so many thanks to them!

[alteratlas]

2025 and I'm not dead yet?

I am still here! Somehow... Yeesh though, I ended up going through enough in the past year to completely remove me from social media. With the New Year, I'm back to this account and back to loving the idea of keeping it as a record of my language / learning progressions. Updates! No major updates on my progress in either of my current focus languages (ASL, Masri, or FusHa), but I have been practicing in secret. :P I might have hit a small rut with ∼ feeling ∼ the progress so hopefully that will help with it. Recently had an IRL also start to learn ASL which restarted some of that initial love for it. It was satisfying to have basic phrases or fingerspelling work for us to get through small conversations! Arabic, oh Arabic... I have had very little motivation to practice and am struggling to get over a frustration barrier. I think maybe I got overexcited with some of my practice material and am too hung up on trying to understand every single word of everything I take in. (Similar problem when practicing Romanian actually... I have to consciously step back and see if I can get the big picture and big details before getting hung up on stuff.) On the bright side, despite a lack of practicing as intense as I want to, I'm still able to pick up info when I hear it in my real life! Actually speaking it on the other hand.... hahahahaaaaa I also added a few more languages to the list of languages I'm trying to pick up here and there! I want to get a basis down for what "here and there" actually means for me. First, how do I pick them out? They're all a mix of languages I want to learn for fun VS languages for practicality. Spanish (Practicality -> Useful for family and areas I live in.) German (Practicality -> Might live in German speaking areas later on in life.) Korean (Fun -> I consume a LOT of Korean music) Japanese (Fun -> I consume a LOT of Japanese Music) Latin (Fun -> It's Latin) Tagalog (Fun -> I consume some music in Tagalog)  Swahili, Thai, and Bangla may show up on the list in the future, but right now those are dreams that are a bit further in the distance.

What experience do I have with them? Spanish (None... D:) German (Took classes a long time ago. That knowledge is rattling somewhere in my head and I cannot access it for the life of me.) Korean (I picked up on Hangul and that is about it.) Japanese (None... D:) Latin (Speaking Romanian gives me a big advantage. I think this is language I don't want to take too seriously and just learn vocab for. Helps me if I ever want to fully pursue any other language with Latin origins.) Tagalog (None D:) What do I want to DO with them? First and foremost, I want to pick up on vocab for all of em. For a lot of these languages, I already take in content in said language. Paying a bit more attention during these times shouldn't be much of a problem. Language specific wise, I think Japanese is the only one I need to learn the scripts for. I don't expect a casual learning method to get me to fluency, but I'm hoping it could give me a nice base for when/if I decide to pursue it more seriously later on. I also want them to serve the purpose of reminding me why and how I love languages. I know I get frustrated easily, but I know my passion outweighs that frustration a million times over. Having the variety helps my brain remember that! I'm excited :P

[saltiestgempearl]

Okay, so langauge side of tumblr...

I'm watching a video to try to wrap my head around the basic core structure of a sentence in American Sign Language, but I'm struggling with the way it's being explained as a "topic + comment" structure.

I'm hoping to figure out what the core word order is, because that makes the most sense to me, so let me take one of the sentence from the video I'm currently watching where she's signing that she does not like ice cream.

[Ice cream] [I] [like + negation].

In English, it's: I do not like ice cream. [I] [like + negation] [ice cream]. English is primarily a Subject, Verb, Object, or SVO language.

In Japanese, it's: 私はアイスクリームが好きではありません。 [I] [ice cream] [like + negation]. Japanese is primarily a Subject, Object, Verb, or SOV language.

So is American Sign Language primarily an Object, Subject, Verb, or OSV language?

[thecommunalfoolboy]

Also as mentioned in my pinned post I’ll edit fanfics for free!!!! Cringe needs to die and I’m majoring in screenwriting so I think it’d be a lot of fun. I’ll even help brainstorm ideas if a fic is in development! I wanna help beginning writers put out the best they can. I also speak German and I’m learning asl, so if you need translations or descriptions of signs in your fic i can 100% help with that. Google translate sucks and I’ve seen so many fucked German sentences in tf2 fics lmao. So yeah just dm me if ur interested!!!

[flockofphoenixes]

[immersionfrancaise]

“Envision a piano. ASL is broken down into many different grammatical parameters. If you assign a different parameter to each finger as you play the piano -- such as facial expression, body movement, speed, hand shape and so on, as you play the piano -- English is a linear language, as if one key is being pressed at a time. However, ASL is more like a chord -- all 10 fingers need to come down simultaneously to express a clear concept or idea in ASL. If just one of those keys were to change the chord, it would create a completely different meaning.”

[abyssalzoned]

Welcome!

This is my main blog, which I'm using as a combined study-/langblr and general thought dumping ground. My most passionate interests include marine science, wildlife biology, ichthyology, ornithology, ASL, and environmental issues.

I am a white transgender man living in the US, and I use he/him pronouns. I'm not a minor, though I don't feel comfortable sharing my actual age here. All of my original posts are tagged with "#your captain speaking". I try to tag any potentially triggering content, but alas I'm only human, so please let me know when I miss something.

[thelegendofstudy]

Does anyone have any resources on Grammer for American Sign Language? I used to be fluent in it when I was younger but ever since graduating highschool I've become rusty and I'm trying to relearn.

[salvadorbonaparte]

Looking up some ASL videos on kanopy rn and is zebra just striped horse because that's amazing

[archivegeo]

started learning dansk tegnsprog (danish sign language) yesterday. it's interesting to see it is more linguistically related to lexical danish than some sign languages are to their local written language. Only an estimated 5000 people use it but by gum I will make it an estimated 5001

video ASL and Dansk Tegnsprog side by side

In other news I have written the transcripts to now 2 gilmore girls episodes in Danish lmao I don't really listen to music so translating tv shows is a very #discoverwhatmovesyou thing happening for me 😙